00:02:30 John Daub: Little island but it would take about two or three hours to explore. The interesting thing about this is that the temple on the top of the island—they have an escalator going up. Oh no way, so you can go on the escalator. Oh this is gonna be awesome. This is really important because it's the ancient caves from like 800 years ago where the priests would go. I'm gonna tell you guys the story but the main place we're gonna see today is this Enoshima Island Spa over here. Oh yeah, just kind of like—it's a beautiful place to relax. Oh yeah, this is where they're gonna have the Olympic yachting.

00:03:03 John Daub: So this is the Enoshima Yacht Harbor and all the yachting stuff in the Olympics is gonna be around this area here—yeah, like Hayama, Enoshima, around this area. So a lot of international people are coming to sort of like practice here and check it out. Amazing island, so the site of the 2020 Olympics yachting. All right, cool. So I'm looking forward to this because it's a lovely day. When I was on the train coming over here—awesome view of Mount Fuji. Yeah, it just keeps getting larger and larger and larger.

00:03:35 Ruth Jarman: I know, right? Well it used to be considered—I mean it still is—considered a holy mountain. So only men were actually able to climb it and only priests could climb to the top. Well it was like—well I'm from Hawaii and so in Hawaii we have the volcano goddess is named Pele. And you're not supposed to take rocks with you from the volcano and everything. The same way Mount Fuji is really considered sort of a very holy. So you'll see a lot of Mount Fuji pictures at the ukiyo-e (woodblock prints) and stuff.

00:04:12 John Daub: Holy moly, you know a lot of stuff. I'm glad I'm here with you today. But you can hear the—I'm sorry about the wind, there is a lot of wind right now. This is the first bridge, right? Is it? Yeah, there is a view of the Enoshima Yacht Harbor. That's the island.

00:04:35 Ruth Jarman: So this bridge didn't exist before. They used to get there by boat in the past, right?

00:04:41 John Daub: Um, that bridge definitely did not exist. The next bridge is the one. Oh okay, yes I see the island. See, that's the one on the top of it?

00:04:56 Ruth Jarman: Yeah. And it's like, go to a beautiful place and see all the way to Shinjuku from there.

00:05:10 John Daub: No way.

00:05:11 Ruth Jarman: Yeah. See all the way to Shinjuku.

00:05:15 John Daub: So it must be really small. We are literally like about an hour away, right?

00:05:19 Ruth Jarman: Yeah. It took me from—I changed trains at Shimbashi, which is not far from Tokyo Station. It took me about an hour.

00:05:32 John Daub: Oh yeah. Natsuka! And that one comes directly here from Shinjuku.

00:05:39 Ruth Jarman: Oh really? Yeah, because it's Odakyu (Odakyu line). This is on—we came on the Odakyu line, which is different from JR.

00:05:45 John Daub: Oh wait, Ruth, I have to tell you guys. You know the thing?

00:05:50 Ruth Jarman: Yes.

00:05:53 John Daub: Karaoke in that.

00:05:54 Ruth Jarman: What? So it's like karaoke, but the whole place is an ocean.

00:05:59 John Daub: Oh yeah. Alright, I like that we're going inside because it's like—the wind is pretty strong.

00:06:06 Ruth Jarman: Yeah, this is Enoshima everybody. I see some of the chats coming in. I'm with Ruth Jarman, and she's going to give us a tour of Enoshima. We're doing a walk across the bridge to get to the island.

00:06:28 John Daub: Fuji in woodblock prints. Right. And this shows you what it used to look like. Oh yeah, this is a famous one. So I guess the beach could have been exposed at low tide, and that's how people went over, but at higher tide, it would be covered in water.

00:06:43 Ruth Jarman: Okay, this is a really good place to explain the awesome cycle. So you see Mt. Fuji here, right? Yes. And you see Enoshima here, right? Yes. And everybody knows that Kamakura, like this whole area, is very spiritual. There's tons of temples and shrines everywhere. There is an ancient myth, which a lot of people believe, that Mt. Fuji, Enoshima, and Ryukoji (Dragon Temple) in Kamakura are connected underground by caves.

00:07:17 John Daub: What?

00:07:18 Ruth Jarman: Yes. So when you go to Mt. Fuji, there's a tour you can take of caves that are under Mt. Fuji that have ice in them. And that's how Tokugawa in the Edo period used to get ice to the castle in Edo. So there's caves under Mt. Fuji. There's caves in Enoshima. And they believe that it's connected to Ryukoji in Kamakura. So basically makes a triangle of power.

00:07:43 John Daub: We're talking like conspiracy theories now. The triangle.

00:07:48 Ruth Jarman: Enoshima has always been known as a power spot. Fuji-san has always been known as a power spot. So we're going to like a really powerful, spiritual kind of place. So off we go.

00:07:58 John Daub: Yes, let's go. Very nice. This is interesting. And Enoshima looks really small from here.

00:08:03 Ruth Jarman: Yeah, it does. It looks like just a bump in the sea, but we're actually walking to it. So it is a significant little island. Well, it's very interesting because when you go up into the temple...

00:08:20 John Daub: Zaiken (Benzaiten?).

00:08:56 Ruth Jarman: Manhole. Five dragons. This is a bonsai tree. Very nice. Looks like a matsu (pine). Isn't that pretty?

00:09:11 John Daub: Yeah, very very nice. I like my manholes. I'm a big manhole cover fan. Do you see the dragons on this? I see dragons.

00:09:26 Ruth Jarman: That's why in Kamakura you'll see a lot of temples that have the dragon Chinese character in them. So Benzaiten (goddess of eloquence), the goddess, she came and knocked those dragons right out. So that's why she controls the dragons. That's 800 years ago. We'd go to the temple on the island and worship Benzaiten. She's the goddess of anything that flows. She's the goddess of intelligence, beauty, like water. Goddess of wind.

00:09:58 John Daub: It's flowing right now. Look at Mount Fuji. You should see the sunset here.

00:10:17 Ruth Jarman: It's crazy clear today.

00:10:20 John Daub: Wow. In our faces.

00:10:40 Ruth Jarman: Oh, you come here every week.

00:10:41 John Daub: Yeah. Cool.

00:11:04 Ruth Jarman: So Ruth invited me to take an inside look at the spas when there's nobody there because you cannot have cameras and take pictures in the spa. It's a device-free so you get free from your device. But I'm taking my device in because that's what I did. Oh this is a long bridge, that's really windy. You know what, we're not gonna talk, we're just gonna hustle this bridge. Okay we're gonna hustle bridge. All right. Oh this is the spa, that's our destination.

00:16:15 John Daub: Yeah I don't know how—actually if you're American I've completely lost—forgotten the feet system. How many feet in a mile? Pop quiz. Nobody. I don't know. But it's deep. Okay oh wow look at this. The wind has died down. Thanks everybody for braving that, thank you guys. Yeah it's beautiful blue skies and you can see—so that this—this goes up the mountain.

00:16:42 Ruth Jarman: Yes, so remember we looked at the candle. Yeah, pointed out the candle. You just follow this path straight up. There's actually escalators going up to the escalators. It's not very expensive, it's definitely worth it. And then you can walk down. Okay but um—and like if you had a day and you wanted something absolutely wonderful to do I recommend this.

00:17:07 John Daub: All right perfect, we only have a couple of hours. All right one more time for those joining us, this is Enoshima. Just a quick look at the map. It's a nice map. Yes yes we did, I have the scars to prove it. Mount Fuji's over here it is. Um and then we are going to go literally like—we're here. Well we're there. Yeah but if you get more time you go up and you climb up to the top where they have the temple.

00:17:40 Ruth Jarman: They have this um—I think his name is John Caulking [?]. John Caulking, I'm liking that first name Caulking. I think it might be Caulking, I'm not sure. But anyway yeah I think it's John anyway. He's the first one who brought um—it's kind of weird but he brought um the sewage system into Japan. And during that time they didn't have it. So his house where he made the first greenhouse in Japan—they have some um—not leftovers, what's it called—like relics of this. You can walk on top of his greenhouse. Oh wow. With red bricks. And you can see into it.

00:18:12 John Daub: Does it stink? The greenhouse?

00:18:14 Ruth Jarman: No, no, no, no. No because you know he was the sewage guy.

00:18:17 John Daub: Like if he wasn't popular he'd go to the bar. Ah, the sewage guy's here, right? He's the one who brought the sewage to Japan. He made the sewage in Yokohama. So he probably took a shower before he came home.

00:18:28 Ruth Jarman: I would hope so. Otherwise his wife would give him that. So sewage man, Mr. John, he lived here. That's how it used to look. Look at this. It used to look like this. And today it looks like I showed you like five minutes ago. So Enoshima Island Spa is actually right here. And there's the same temple. So if you go up to the top you'll see a shrine where you have a goddess sitting down playing a sitar. Whoa. Basically like a guitar from India. A sitar, so yeah.

00:18:54 John Daub: I like how they're starting to get things in many languages. Using a QR code you can get all the information in your own language.

00:19:07 Ruth Jarman: And this Enoshima Island is famous for what? Whitebait, these tiny little white fish.

00:19:10 John Daub: Oh yeah. It's so good, it's called shirasu (whitebait). I love it. So here we go, in here.

00:19:18 Ruth Jarman: Oh wow, that's it. Alright, so bye bye old town, we'll get another look at you at another time. But this entrance is cool, huh? The gate. This is very cool.

00:19:25 John Daub: We're going to end the livestream here. So we have survived the bridge, wind bridge of death. But it's not that bad. But this is now, we've reached our destination, the Enoshima Spa.

00:19:52 Ruth Jarman: Do you want to go to the secret view of Mount Fuji? Okay. Over here. The secret is good. It's like an uninterrupted view of Mount Fuji. Other than the candle over there.

00:20:07 John Daub: You have to break a rule, John.

00:20:10 Ruth Jarman: Oh really? Shh. This should be its own livestream. So we have to go under. Rule breaker.

00:20:21 John Daub: I almost got caught.

00:20:22 Ruth Jarman: Okay, I almost got caught too. Okay. Shh. Didn't they have beer garden out here? Should we speak quietly? It's a secret. No, no. Nobody is going to get mad. Oh wow.

00:20:42 John Daub: We need some music.

00:20:43 Ruth Jarman: Yeah. Dun-dun-dun.

00:20:50 John Daub: Wow! This is actually the same view you get from the pool upstairs.

00:20:53 Ruth Jarman: Oh, so okay, so that's from both pools. Yeah, so right up there is where the outside one is closed, so we're still going to go out and look. Alright, so there's the pool up there. Oh it's a pool, so you could actually...

00:21:10 John Daub: I like this spot because you can go in with a bathing suit.

00:21:14 Ruth Jarman: Yes, yes. So those of you who are afraid to show the junk to a bunch of strangers...

00:21:20 John Daub: I got no problem with it. You can wear a bathing suit here. So the answer is here. So here we go, I'm going to cut the livestream. There's your Mount Fuji right there, everybody.

00:21:34 Ruth Jarman: Where did it go? Sometimes it just disappears.

00:21:37 John Daub: It moves, I told you. Yeah I don't see it at all. You know, Mount Fuji, I used to live on the base of Mount Fuji in Fujinomiya. And I was literally like—you'd go outside the window and it's right there, Mount Fuji. And in the summer because of the haze it would just disappear even though it's just like one kilometer away it feels like. It's gone because of the haze. And today because of—in the winter is the best time to get views of Mount Fuji. And I got to tell you right now is one of the clearest days that I've seen in a long time. So I hope you're enjoying that. Ruth and I are going to go inside and set up for a livestream inside the spa. Everybody, enjoy Mount Fuji.